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Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon, 1963-1972
Space expert David West Reynolds takes you on a historical journey through the world’s most renowned space program.
Featuring a wealth of rare photographs, artwork, and cutaway illustrations, Apollo recaptures the excitement of the USA’s journey to the moon. From the adventurous astronauts to the scientists and engineers who designed and built the state-of-the-art spacecraft, Reynolds covers every aspect of this epic voyage. Through concise description, he introduces the uninitiated to this thrilling episode in U.S. history while also providing engaging details for the space aficionado. All of the key events and personalities are presented, creating a clear picture of how we got to the moon and what happened along the way. The detailed and meticulously labeled diagrams and maps give the reader an in-depth understanding of the technology that carried the astronauts to the moon and what they accomplished while they were there. In addition, the book includes a foreword by Wally Schirra, the only astronaut to fly in all three of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, and an afterword by Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon, 1963-1972 is truly the most comprehensive account of the Apollo program ever written.
Featuring a wealth of rare photographs, artwork, and cutaway illustrations, Apollo recaptures the excitement of the USA’s journey to the moon. From the adventurous astronauts to the scientists and engineers who designed and built the state-of-the-art spacecraft, Reynolds covers every aspect of this epic voyage. Through concise description, he introduces the uninitiated to this thrilling episode in U.S. history while also providing engaging details for the space aficionado. All of the key events and personalities are presented, creating a clear picture of how we got to the moon and what happened along the way. The detailed and meticulously labeled diagrams and maps give the reader an in-depth understanding of the technology that carried the astronauts to the moon and what they accomplished while they were there. In addition, the book includes a foreword by Wally Schirra, the only astronaut to fly in all three of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, and an afterword by Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon, 1963-1972 is truly the most comprehensive account of the Apollo program ever written.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published May 20, 2002
3 people are currently reading
392 people want to read
About the author
David West Reynolds
48 books17 followersDr. David West Reynolds earned his Ph.D. in archeology at the University of Michigan. A lecturer, veteran of field expeditions on three continents and author of scientific archeological publications, Reynolds has also written X-Wing: A Pocket Manual, Tie Fighter: A Pocket Manual, and various Star Wars articles. He approaches the world of Star Wars like ancient Rome or Egypt, considering it a culture from another time and place to explore. Reynolds lives in Marin County, California.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 4, 2019
This is a beautiful book that is ultimately a beautiful tribute to all the men and women who dreamed of reaching space and the moon and then worked to make that a reality. It’s full of glossy color photos, but the text is also well written. The writer captures the spirit of wonder, adventure, and optimism of the space program and remains apolitical and nonjudgmental but still honest.
The book covers man’s first dreams of going to the moon, then the Mercury and Gemini missions. Each Apollo mission is explained, then post-Apollo stuff like space stations and the space shuttle.
I learned a lot even though I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about the space program. The book contains a four-page fold-out diagram of the Saturn V, and I knew very little about the rockets before this.
You feel like you’re there with the astronauts throughout the book. Here’s the description of Apollo 8’s liftoff:
Borman, Lovell, and Anders felt the rumble originating 350 feet below them. The thurst had risen to maxiumm. Explosive charges fired and released all four hold-down arms within the same millisecond. The Saturn V suddenly stood on pure flame, pure force, in the air, and it rose. Fire and ice cascaded past one another as frozen condensation vibrated off the supercooled hull and rained down around the engines. The holocaust poured and blossomed. Hypersonic waves of flame bathed the flame defector’s sufarce, searing 1,900 F torrent blasting almost an ince of ceramic surface off the devide. For 12 seconds, the Saturn V lifted, its engines moving to steer it from drifting into the launch tower.
Here are a few random things I learned (mostly about the Saturn V):
● All the instructions for assembling the Saturn V were not saved, so the rocket would basically have to be reinvented if we wanted to use it again. Like, !!!
● Without an atmosphere, distances are impossible to judge on the moon. Just looking at photos shows you how.
● It took about six hours to move a rocket to the launch pad.
● Wernher Von Braun was so inspired by the movie Frau im Mond that he insisted on all the rockets being painted black and white as they were in the film.
● Bar codes were invented to keep track of all the rocket’s parts.
● Just the flames from the rocket would reach mach 3+.
I liked the map of the moon that showed all the Apollo landing sites. And it felt very appropriate to be reading it during the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. It makes a good coffee table book but is definitely worth reading every word.
Book Blog
The book covers man’s first dreams of going to the moon, then the Mercury and Gemini missions. Each Apollo mission is explained, then post-Apollo stuff like space stations and the space shuttle.
I learned a lot even though I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about the space program. The book contains a four-page fold-out diagram of the Saturn V, and I knew very little about the rockets before this.
You feel like you’re there with the astronauts throughout the book. Here’s the description of Apollo 8’s liftoff:
Borman, Lovell, and Anders felt the rumble originating 350 feet below them. The thurst had risen to maxiumm. Explosive charges fired and released all four hold-down arms within the same millisecond. The Saturn V suddenly stood on pure flame, pure force, in the air, and it rose. Fire and ice cascaded past one another as frozen condensation vibrated off the supercooled hull and rained down around the engines. The holocaust poured and blossomed. Hypersonic waves of flame bathed the flame defector’s sufarce, searing 1,900 F torrent blasting almost an ince of ceramic surface off the devide. For 12 seconds, the Saturn V lifted, its engines moving to steer it from drifting into the launch tower.
Here are a few random things I learned (mostly about the Saturn V):
● All the instructions for assembling the Saturn V were not saved, so the rocket would basically have to be reinvented if we wanted to use it again. Like, !!!
● Without an atmosphere, distances are impossible to judge on the moon. Just looking at photos shows you how.
● It took about six hours to move a rocket to the launch pad.
● Wernher Von Braun was so inspired by the movie Frau im Mond that he insisted on all the rockets being painted black and white as they were in the film.
● Bar codes were invented to keep track of all the rocket’s parts.
● Just the flames from the rocket would reach mach 3+.
I liked the map of the moon that showed all the Apollo landing sites. And it felt very appropriate to be reading it during the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. It makes a good coffee table book but is definitely worth reading every word.
Book Blog
July 7, 2019
I’m kind of a space junkie. As a kid I remember crowding around a tiny Black & White tv with my family to watch Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. This book takes you through all NASA endured and accomplished with the Apollo missions. Really enjoyed it!
August 30, 2022
This is the best space book I've read. It would be the book I'd recommend for anyone looking for one book on the subject. Very readable, beautiful photos, clear descriptions, and best of all a real sense of the grandeur. I enjoyed this so much.
January 3, 2020
I learned lots of details about some of the post-11 missions, things I had no idea about. 1 star less because of the somewhat annoying ra-ra-ism, as in "capitalism and the US are the best". Still I enjoyed the mission histories.
July 4, 2012
I couldn't put it down; every glossy page was full color with photos, diagrams and sidebars, and prose that didn't overwhelm with either technical or political details.
The only thing I wished for was more personal insight from the people actually involved - engineers, mission control, astronauts.
But the book was superb at "framing" the entire Apollo program, such as this example:
The book does a tremendous job not only describing the scale of the 363 foot tall rocket (of which only 10 ft would actually return to earth) - but also blows your mind with the scale of the facilities required to assemble and move such a monstrosity. I wonder if you can still see the leviathan crawlers that moved it to its launch pad? The two crawlers (NASA always build backups) are the largest land vehicles in the world.
This was my favorite excerpt, about Apollo 8, the first orbit around the moon:
Everyone knows Neil Armstrong's famous words when he first set foot on the moon, but I had never heard the transcript of the astronauts on Apollo 8, on Christmas Eve (broadcast around the world), just before they lost communication with earth while passing behind the moon. They took turns quoting the first 10 verses of the Bible, Genesis 1:10.
The only thing I wished for was more personal insight from the people actually involved - engineers, mission control, astronauts.
But the book was superb at "framing" the entire Apollo program, such as this example:
The Saturn V [largest rocket ever made, to this day] would become the greatest pinnacle of rocket design ever achieved and an achievement ranking among the wonders of time, along with Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. When the Greek historian Herodotus visited the Great Pyramid in 430 BC, he asked the locals how many people it had taken to build the legendary structure. "Four hundred thousand," they told him, working over 10 years, an almost inconceivable labor force to be organized toward one construction goal. When NASA took a count of the Americans working on the Moon program during the decade of the 1960's, they discovered a starling coincidence. Almost five millenia after the Great Pyramid was brought to pass, a new wonder would be formed by the same number of hands.
The book does a tremendous job not only describing the scale of the 363 foot tall rocket (of which only 10 ft would actually return to earth) - but also blows your mind with the scale of the facilities required to assemble and move such a monstrosity. I wonder if you can still see the leviathan crawlers that moved it to its launch pad? The two crawlers (NASA always build backups) are the largest land vehicles in the world.
This was my favorite excerpt, about Apollo 8, the first orbit around the moon:
After Apollo 8, the world would never again see itself from the same perspective. We could no longer pretend that our world was without limits; we would see that we were an island paradise in the vast cold void of space. The image of the earthrise communicated this perspective in a language that transcended cultural difference. As Bill Anders later shared with the space historian Andrew Chaikin, we had come all this way to study the Moon, and what we discovered was the Earth.
Everyone knows Neil Armstrong's famous words when he first set foot on the moon, but I had never heard the transcript of the astronauts on Apollo 8, on Christmas Eve (broadcast around the world), just before they lost communication with earth while passing behind the moon. They took turns quoting the first 10 verses of the Bible, Genesis 1:10.
December 5, 2009
This is a good history of the Apollo space program with details going back to the beginnings of rocket science with Robert Goddard, Tsiolkovsky and Wehrner Von Braun and including the Mercury and Gemini programs.
There is information about each Apollo mission, with lots of detail on the planning and engineering that went into creating and assembling the Saturn V and scouting landing locations. There are a wealth of great photographs and a map of all of the Apollo landing sites. I like how he points out the great scientific accomplishments of later Apollo missions (which I had been unaware of) and how they were shortchanged by the media and Nixon, whose mutual disinterest the author blames in Apollo's early termination. I was also surprised how critical he was of NASA itself in later years, particularly of the space shuttle program which he points out could only achieve low earth orbit-lower than even Gemini flew-couldn't handle as large a payload and was prohibitively costly. This book made me sad that it's been so long since we've sent manned missions out of our own orbit and really appreciate the achievement the moon landings were.
There is information about each Apollo mission, with lots of detail on the planning and engineering that went into creating and assembling the Saturn V and scouting landing locations. There are a wealth of great photographs and a map of all of the Apollo landing sites. I like how he points out the great scientific accomplishments of later Apollo missions (which I had been unaware of) and how they were shortchanged by the media and Nixon, whose mutual disinterest the author blames in Apollo's early termination. I was also surprised how critical he was of NASA itself in later years, particularly of the space shuttle program which he points out could only achieve low earth orbit-lower than even Gemini flew-couldn't handle as large a payload and was prohibitively costly. This book made me sad that it's been so long since we've sent manned missions out of our own orbit and really appreciate the achievement the moon landings were.
May 23, 2013
Beautiful illustrated history of the entire Apollo program including the missions, astronauts, and scientists and personalities who made it happen. There is some striking photography in this book, as well as a great gatefold of the Saturn V rocket (which Jeff Bezos just excavated from the Atlantic Ocean a few weeks ago).
If you are a space fan or are simply looking for a beautiful book on American history, I highly recommend this title!
If you are a space fan or are simply looking for a beautiful book on American history, I highly recommend this title!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews